Now, if you go to sleep, I know it's my fault. What I should like to do in the four sessions I don't have with you is look at our Lord Jesus Christ. First, Lord, examine who he is as far as Scripture can tell us. And we can understand Scripture. And then examine him in his interaction with people, the kind of person he is, who we have come to know. And hope that we shall see this is our relationship and the kind of relationship he has with us. and the kind of relationship we ought to have with one another as Christians. Let's turn to Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter two. And Paul did not like this for a doctrinal discussion, but it is the key passage in any discussion of a person of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't believe it in its doctrinal position. I would like to use it or have us see it the way Paul was using it when he wrote to the Galatians. Bookings chapter two, verse one. I'm using a revised translation, but it will be a little bit different from your King James. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love. being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a service, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God is highly exalted in him. and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord for the glory of God the Father. Who is Jesus Christ? It was a great question that plagued the church in the first four centuries of its history. And whether we realize it or not, we are deeply indebted to certain men who wrestle with this problem. We can repeat what Scripture says. That's not the point. What does Scripture mean in what it says? And there's one man I want to meet when I get to heaven, have a long talk with him, and it's a young man, at least he was young, at this particular church council, a young man by the name of Athanasius, a young theologian, who stood against what was almost an overwhelming time to insist on the full deity of Jesus Christ. Humanly speaking, if it had not been for that man, the Christian church, as we know it, would have been swept with a denial of the deity of Jesus Christ. There have always been the tendencies to swing to one extreme or the other. So to stress the humanity of Jesus Christ as the liberals have done that you lose his deity. There has been the other danger. So to stress the deity of Jesus Christ that you lose his humanity. Scripture brings the two together, and I don't know any passage in the Word of God that does it as beautifully as Philippians chapter two. And I'd like to examine that, and then I hope be able to see why Paul was writing. We shall have to begin with verse six, and look at some expressions Paul uses and try to get their meaning. And we'll just go down through these verses and pick up some of these important expressions. First of all, in verse six, we shall have to describe or talk about the word form. Though he was in the form of God, or as the King James translation has it, who being in the form of God? What is the form of God? Scripture seems quite clear in teaching that God does not have a physical form. God is spirit being. What's in the Scripture mean by form? Which you'll have to get away from our idea of our English word form. Which contains the thought that there are external, physical characteristics. Through which we see and comprehend this thing we are talking about. That's not the meaning here. C.B. Warfield, that great Princeton theologian of a century ago, summed up the meaning of the word form that Paul used this way. The form of anything is the sum of those characterizing qualities that make a thing the precise thing that it is. It is the sum of those characterizing qualities that make a thing the precise thing that it is and not something else if we were to talk about the form of God as Paul is using the expression here it is the sum of those characteristics that make God to be God and not angel or man and when Paul says our Lord Jesus was in the form of God He has given us as clear an expression of the full deity of Jesus Christ that he writes. Everything essential to being God, Jesus Christ was. What does it call me by being in the form of God? He has used a word here that's more than existing. It is the idea of personal existence. And Paul seems to be saying, the form of God is not something impersonal. There is no deity in the abstract. There are only divine persons, one of whom is the one we know as Jesus Christ. Now what sometimes those who deny the need of Jesus Christ Christ will face you with what seems to be a mathematical contradiction. If you say that the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, as we Orthodox confess, then one God plus one God plus one God equals three God. And you're a polytheist. You're a worshiper of more than one God. Any second grade child knows that one plus one plus one equals three. but we are talking about three and one in different categories. When we say Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we grant that one plus one plus one equals three. There are three persons. When we say one, we are talking about the being of God and not the persons of God. And so we are talking about two different categories. We are saying there's one God. exist in free persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And in this personal existence of the Son, there is all the deities, Paul is saying, that there is in the Father and in the Holy Spirit simultaneously. And by deities, We are talking about the eternal personal existence of the omnipresent, omnipresent, omniscient being designated God. There was a time, according to biblical revelation, when all created matter was not. He called into existence by the word of his power everything created, everything material. There was never a time when God was not. There was never a time when Jesus Christ was not. Who being, subsisting, personal in the form of God, in full deity? Then there's another expression Paul uses here. did not count equality with God. Equality with God is a state of existence, a condition of existence, in keeping with the form of God. Who being fully God lives in a condition that goes along with being God. Equality with God. It's a state of existence. of living a state of existence. Now the way Paul has constructed this statement, he says, who being in the form of God, the very way he has constructed this statement, existing in the form of God is true while all the other actions of Philippians chapter two go on. When he emptied himself he was still in the form of God. When he humbled himself he was still in the form of God. When he subjected himself to death, the death of the cross, he was still in the form of God. This is something that's never changed. You have a parallel construction that I want to use in a moment in Second Corinthians chapter eight, where Paul says, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, but though he was rich, it's the same kind of construction. Who being rich for our sakes became poor that we through his poverty might be rich? What he's saying is being rich. is a condition that was true while all the other actions went on. When he became poor, he was still rich in the way Paul is using the term riches. And that's what he's saying here. While all these other actions occurred, he was still existing in the form of God. What then did he do? This translation has he emptied himself. And that is probably the greatest passage of controversy about the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our tendency is immediately to ask, and this is a proper translation of it, empty himself. Our tendency immediately is to ask, empty himself of what? And I think right there is where we make the mistake. This particular verb, to empty, is never used literally in the New Testament. It is always used metaphorically, never literally. So you can't ask, of what? Do you empty a thing? Now, if it were used literally, I could say, I will take the glass and empty it. I mean, I pour out what is already in it. But not so if I use it metaphorically. Paul used it metaphorically, that he refused the words of man's wisdom in preaching the gospel, Let the cross of Christ be made of none effect. Let the cross of Christ be empty. Empty of what? Well, you don't ask that question when you're using this word metaphorically. Just annul the cross, the meaning of it, to make it of none effect. When Paul says our Lord Jesus emptied himself, you can't jump beyond the himself to ask of what. It was himself he emptied. Not of anything, but himself. The whole point Paul is getting at is, we in our relationship with each other are to follow his example. What are we to do? Empty ourselves of anything? No. We are to become servants of our fellow Christians. And Paul is saying that's precisely what the Lord Jesus did. He emptied himself. He took the loathe of it. How did he empty himself? He goes on to describe how he emptied himself by taking. Now, if you want to use this verb literally, emptied himself, you don't empty something by adding to it. But that's precisely what Paul said he did. He emptied himself taking the form of a servant. That was the empty. And the form of a servant was just as real as the form of God. And our Lord Jesus, the eternal Son of God, empties himself by taking on human nature. He goes on to explain what he means by the form of a servant, that is, human nature, becoming a man. So in the great act of incarnation, our Lord voluntarily took human nature to himself. And what we have to say of our Lord Jesus Christ without intending to understand it, is in the one person of Jesus Christ. There are two natures, divine and human. I'm using the term divine as a substitute for deity. It's a common term in the discussion. In that one person of Jesus of man, there are at the same time, without any change of nature, there is the divine nature and the human nature. And when the divine person, the Son of God, took the human nature, that was empty, he left the condition of being on an equality with God to take the condition of humility and service, of human equity, of human life. What I understand the Scriptures to teach is something like this. Our Lord deliberately chose to become man, genuinely man, without, of course, giving up any deity. That would be impossible by very definition of deity. Once you predicate immutability of deity, the deity cannot change. I, the Lord, change not. Then it's impossible to give up any deity and still be God. In fact, the idea of giving up deity would be impossible to discuss. So without surrendering any deity or any of the attributes of deity, he took on human existence, human nature. So the while he was here on earth, he had all the attributes of deity and all the attributes of genuine humanity. Now what I understand is this, that our Lord became poor. all the while he was rich. That is, he had all the attributes of deity, but deliberately refused their exercise in his own interest. In other words, he took a genuine human existence, a genuine human life. He lived the way we have to live, apart from sin. He lived in voluntary... self-limitation that has limited himself to human existence, limited we must live, lived a life of dependence upon the Father and the Holy Spirit. The words that I speak, he said, are not mine, but his essentially. The works that I do, the Father does them, I don't do. And he did not enter his public ministry in the baptism of the Spirit of God. Dependence. writer of the Hebrews puts into the mouth of the Lord Jesus those words, I will put my trust in him. That is, I will put my trust in God. And he would not, in order to ease his own life here, call into play the attributes of his deeds. Now let me go back to that second Corinthians, page nine. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and try to illustrate it. who being rich became poor. The same idea as I understand it in Philippians too. Let's take a very wealthy man who wants to go down and go a poverty-stricken area and share the life of the poor. And so he leaves his mansion and his servants and his wealth and his abundance of food and he leaves his chauffeur and his limousine and his fine clothes and he puts on the clothes of the people of the areas in which he is coming. And he comes into this poverty-stricken area, and he finds a little basement, one-room apartment, damp, dirty, cold, cheerless, the way other people in this area have to live, and he lives in that apartment. And like other people, he goes up to the employment agency and tries to find a job. And like other people in that area, he can't find a job. And he's sitting in this apartment building in this basement, apartments cold and hungry. And he thinks of the mansion he has left and its abundance of food. And he refuses to send back to his servants to bring him some food to relieve his own hunger. He has determined to share to the full the experience of those whom he has come to serve. Now he will send back for some money and things in order to give to others, but he refuses to do it for himself. When Satan says, turn these stones into bread to satisfy his own hunger, he refused, but he could take a loaf of bread, a few loaves of bread and fish and multiply them for a hungry mother. But he was determined to share our life to live as we live, all the while being in the form of God. The writer of the Hebrews tells us he didn't. He might be a merciful and faithful high priest. And when I come to the Lord Jesus Christ, I'm not coming to one who hadn't experienced what I experienced in a part. He experienced temptation, of course, but the source was external, not internal, as so many of my temptations were. He lived by faith as I lived by faith. He had to trust in God as I have to trust in God. He didn't know what hunger and sorrow and thirst and heartache and weariness were, as I have to know. He deliberately restricted himself to this kind of life. Now, what did this do? Well, this is what I'd like to look at in the gospel as our Lord interacts with different people. He didn't overwhelm them with a blaze of glory. He lived as they lived. And when they saw him at first glance, from first meeting, there wasn't anything unusual about him. It's only as they listened to him talk, as they watched him work, that they came to discover there's something unique about this individual. And the only way ultimately they could explain his uniqueness is to say he's the only begotten of the Father. What did this do to them? Well, one of the incidents that thrills me really and I know why, in no way, and no way, intend to be disrespectful of our Lord. But one of the things that thrills me is when our Lord was in the upper room, you know, Passover and instituting the Lord's stuff. These men had lived with him for three and a half years, and they'd gotten to know him pretty well. And... Do you remember what they were doing at that Passover and while he was instituting the doctrine? You remember what they were doing? Well, the Gospels tell us they were arguing which of them was the greatest. Now, let me admit they had no business doing that, but they did it anyhow. Now, the thing that throws me is I've shared with some of you before. I suppose our kids are pretty normal, as normal as they can be having up to the parents. When we are off to someone else's home for dinner, they're usually on their good behavior. In fact, this has been a point of contention at home that, look, don't use your fork that way. Use your napkin this way, you know. You want to act like this when we go out in someone else's home? And they respond, we don't act like that when we're in someone else's home. And they don't. They've got all their manners on in someone else's home. And when we're sitting at someone else's dinner table, they not only have their manners on in regard to forks and knives and food and napkins, but in regard to each other. My wife and I sometimes look at each other and someone else's home when we're dinner, they're our kids. Why, they're polite to each other. But when we get home, you know, and we're around the supper table, things have been all jarring up that afternoon at school. You know what happens at the supper table. Wham, wham, wham, it goes, you know. And I'm not saying we tolerate this or we allow it to go on, but it occurs. They fight. Why do they argue here and not there? Their response is we're at home here. Those disciples were so at home when Jesus Christ said, go ahead and argue with him right here at the doomsday. I like the way he corrected it. Not you bunch of unspiritual good for nothing disciples. No, he just very quietly got up and took the water in the town. He went around and watched everything. They were arguing about who was going to be the greatest, and he took the place in the service. And that settled the argument. We see, because he did not come down overwhelming us with a blaze of glory, but lives as we live, it's possible to get close to it. and they got so good and they were right at home with him and they could be open with him they could blurt out what they were thinking and when you begin to experience the fellowship with the Lord Jesus like that and you begin to experience that with each other that kind of close That kind of openness, that kind of relaxation in each other's presence. Life takes on a whole new meaning. And this is what Paul is saying to him. Look, our Lord got down like that. You do the same thing with each other. Now, you can't put this on, mind you. You can't put this on. You can't do it. I've talked many a time, if I try to do what the Lord did, takes the basin and the water and the towel and washes the side of the sheet. I think Peter would have kicked me because he would have known it wasn't genuine. I was putting on. I was pretending. I was saying, this is what a Christian ought to do, and I'm doing it for the wrong motivation. But this is a kind of relationship where you can't pretend. And what our Lord did was genuine. He had genuinely become a servant. And what he did in walking their feet was the natural expression of the decision he had made to become man in the form of the church. Now Paul is saying, look, if you have the same mind, it'll lead to the same action. You do what he did. And if he